Ground Advantage Charges

[kath.layn]

I’m a seller in Oregon, selling mostly heavy dinner plates.  I’ve been using mostly Ground Advantage, but I do give buyers a choice of that or Priority or Fed Ex.  I’ve been happy with the Ground Advantage discounts as it really helps pay for my shipping supplies.  But today I had a really extreme one.  Items cost 80$, Ground Advantage shipping to New York was 60$ for the buyer.  Actual shipping cost with discount was 17$.  That’s a 43$ difference!  I have a moral dilemma about how much to refund the buyer.  Curious to hear from similar sellers how you are handling this situation.  Thanks

[12345jamesstamps]

Who's to say you won't get a surprise extra shipping cost from eBay?....after days or a week.

I read about it sometimes here on this platform.

[lakefor94]

@kath.layn 

What price do you see for UPS ground?

[kath.layn]

I didn’t check that.  I never use UPS, so I don't give buyers that option.  Just GA, Priority or FedEx Grround.

[chevymontecarlo88]

That is a pretty big difference and i would not feel comfortable not offering a refund on the difference. You could set up your shipping rules to include any handling or supply fees that will be added to the shipping cost. If you want to get creative, you could offer another one of your items as a thank you to the customer and just send it to them as a thank you gift. As 12345jamesstamps has stated, you may want to make sure the shipping charge is correct. There has been some shenanigans with shipping fees recently.

[toysaver · Accepted solution]

If you plan to refund wait until after you find out it arrived safely without damage.  That $43 can be your bank if anything breaks.

[kath.layn]

Yes!  That’s what I’ll do.  If everything arrives safely I’ll send the buyer some money back.  Just wondering how much to refund.  Suggestions?

[worldmarketenterprisesltd]

chevymintecarlo88 YOU are so right about  shenanigans with shipping fees.

We just shipped out something via UPS......the item weighed in at 9ozs.

We rounded it up to 1 pound.

We used ebay to print the label and took it directly to the UPS store.

The item arrived safely to the buyer of course.

Here's the problem:

We get a message from ebay saying that we underpaid for the ship label and were being charged $12.95.

Now, check this out......ebay says that the ship label has printed on it 16ozs and we were billable for 1 pound.

NEWS FLASH! 16OZS IS ONE POUND.

I phoned ebay Customer Service and explained what I just received....I also said that I hand walked the package to the UPS Store and if there was a problem, the UPS Customer person receiving my package would have flagged me to pay more postage.

This is not the first time this has happened to us and its only happened when we use UPS.

Although this is the first time we are calling out ebay on this mistake....(we might go over some of the other ones we received from ebay to just make sure).

I will say the ebay Customer Service person was nice and assured me this would be taken care of and we would be reimbursed.......WE SHALL SEE???

So check your shipping fees and make sure everything is on the up and up!

[kath.layn]

Maybe I’ve been lucky so far. In 10 years as a seller I’ve only gotten refunds of postage (fromUSPS) and twice gotten dinged for owing extra. Both of those were FedEx. One reason I don’t like to use FedEx. 

[chevymontecarlo88]

There seems to be a lot of this going on these days. Good luck and would be interested in how that plays out.

[chevymontecarlo88]

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@kath.layn wrote:

Yes!  That’s what I’ll do.  If everything arrives safely I’ll send the buyer some money back.  Just wondering how much to refund.  Suggestions?

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If everything clears, why not just refund them the difference? Its good Karma and good customer service. I do understand shipping supplies and don't think it's unreasonable to deduct that from the amount.